Pulling from multiple nested lists at the same time and on the same text slide

[Brieana]

Hi,

I have 5 procedures. In each procedure, there are 3 text slides each
with about 14 text boxes. The reason for so many text boxes is because
it was the only way I could figure out how to make a 'faux' table in e-
Prime without using any heavy coding. On these text slides, I have
some text boxes that are to pull values from one nested list and other
textboxes that are to pull values from a different nested list. More
specifically, I want each textbox to randomly present only one value
from the nested list without repeating any of the values that are
being presented in the other textboxes drawing from the same list.
After reading the Users Guide, I thought that colon syntax was the way
to go. I was able to get the textboxes that were to pull values from
one nested list to work so that only one value was presented in each
textbox, the order was random, and there weren't any repeats. However,
as soon as I added the other nested list to the procedure using the
colon syntax method, e-prime would stop running once it got to that
particular text slide and read that the last attribute referenced on
the slide did not exist (even though it was clearly listed and defined
on my list).

Would anyone happen to know of a way for half of the textboxes on a
slide to only draw one value from a nested list and the other half on
the same slide to only draw one value from a different nested list?

I found that I was able to have each group of textboxes draw from
their respective nested list if I defined each nested list on the same
master list and their attributes. However, I want these values to be
presented SIMULTANEOUSLY. Since each nested list was referenced in the
same master list, I could only get the values to show up on the slide
in a sequential manner. I need both sets of values presented together.

Any and all ideas or help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

Brieana

[liwenna]

Hello Brieana,

First, I wonder why you decided to use colon syntax rather than simple
'brackets' ([variablename] instead of [variablename:x]). I suppose
therefore that you have the values need to be used within one trial
(procedure) nested in a vertical manner: each value it's own level in
a list. This may be more intuitive to you as a person, but it's not to
e-prime (hence you have to use the colon's to get e-prime to pull a
value of a different level of the list).

E-prime's normal 'way to do things' is to use a single level of each
list (in a nested series of lists) on each run of a procedure. I would
advice you to give in to e-prime's way and transpose the nested lists
so that each value is stored in a separate attribute and that each
level of a nested list contains a series of values that is to be used
within one run of the procedure. I.e. nestedlist1 could have 7
attributes called v1, v2 etc to v7. Each of these 7 values would be
used within one run of the procedure and the next level of the list
could contain the same values but in a different order etc. in order
to achieve randomization of the text locations -> the textboxes 1 to 7
should be given the 'text' [v1], [v2] etc (note: no :x) in order to
resolve to/pull out the values of the attributes v1, v2 etc. If you'd
set the nestlist to be presented in a random order, a random level of
the list would be used for each run of the procedure.

If you nest multiple lists e-prime should be able to draw values from
two nested lists onto the same slide, provided that the two lists do
not have identical attribute names from which values are drawn. I.e.
in your master lists in the nested column you can nest multiple lists
divided by comma's (nestedlist1, nestedlist2). Then if one of the
nested lists contains the values that you need for textboxes 1 to 7
(v1, v2 - v7) and the other the values for textboxes 8 to 14 (v8 -
v14), e-prime should run just fine.

Hope this helps,

AW

[Brieana]

Thanks for the response! Silly me did not even think about using a
comma between the names of nested lists located on the same level.
That helped a lot and I'm happy to report that everything works just
as I wanted it to now.

Thanks again,

Brieana